| | By Mick James
Leaving a big
consultancy – with all
its resources and
well-defined career
paths – can be one of
the most difficult
decisions a consultant
can make. I spoke to two
consultants from
specialist
telecommunications and
networks consultancy
Hudson & Yorke to find
out why they felt
leaving a big, branded
consultancy to work for
a smaller firm was the
right move for them.
For managing
consultant Carlos
Clavijo, the move to a
smaller consultancy gave
him the chance both to
concentrate on his
chosen market and to
further his career.
Originally working to
implement network
solutions in the oil and
gas sector for
Schlumberger, the
mergers with Sema and
Atos Origin allowed him
to develop his
consultancy skills.
“I had a long-term
goal of moving into
services but I was not
sure how to achieve it,
as my role was more of a
technical expert,” he
says. “After the merger
there was more
opportunity to become
involved in
client-facing work and
to develop my skills in
leadership and
management.”
However, he began to
feel that working for
such a large firm was
limiting, rather than
expanding his
opportunities.
“I felt stuck, there
was no way to make it up
the scale unless my
manager’s manager
moved,” he says. “Also,
in a large organisation
you lose control over
the kind of work you do;
you are part of a pool
of resources. The
network and telecoms
area is the one I most
enjoyed working with but
we didn’t have the
clients for me to work
in that area 100% of the
time.”
Clavijo looked at a
number of consultancies,
both large and small, | |
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| | before settling on
Hudson & Yorke.
“I talked to a number
of big consultancies, as
well as the Big Four,
but I didn’t feel they
would expand my area of
knowledge,” he says. “At
Hudson & Yorke all my
projects are in the
network and telecoms
area.”
Job security was not
an issue.
“There’s a perception
that bigger companies
offer more security but
you can see that the big
consultancies are well
into reorganisation and
a lot of people are
being made redundant,”
he says. “It’s a bit
ironic – big firms have
much more freedom to
grow and shrink their
workforce at will – the
smaller consultancies
have to be much more
careful, because every
person makes a big
difference.”
This was a major
motivation for Clavijo:
“The most exciting thing
is to move from being
part of a company with
an established brand and
find that now you are
the person helping with
the definition of that
brand and its
personality in the
future. There’s a lot
more empowerment here,
you are encouraged to
take on more
responsibility and to
drive new initiatives
forward. That’s not to
say in a big company
they discourage you from
being creative, but
there are well-defined
structures and paths and
change filters down
extremely slowly.”
This feeling – of
shaping the company – is
felt at all levels, as
senior consultant
Andreas Giannopoulos,
who moved to Hudson &
Yorke from Accenture,
explains: “In a smaller
company you get to see
all the different areas,
to experience them and
to shape them. The CEO
and COO are there all
the time, you can feel
their vision and also
influence it. It’s so
much easier to get to
the CEO and COO and get
their feedback and | |
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| | guidance – you just pop
in and say hello. In a
big consultancy you
might never see the CEO
in your life.”
For Giannopoulos a
key driver of his
consultancy career has
been to build strategic
and project skills on
top of his deep
technical knowledge of
networks and telecoms.
“You can stay in deep
technical focus, but it
gets more and more
difficult to add to that
position as you get
older, there’s always
more and more technology
coming out,” he says.
“I’m still involved with
technology, but what I
like now is being able
to have influence from a
different position, to
do project management
instead of being trapped
in the detail.”
Like Clavijo, he saw
the move to Hudson &
Yorke as a way to both
specialise in networks
and telecoms and develop
his career: “Hudson &
Yorke is smaller in
terms of revenues, but
in terms of scope and
types of clients it’s
not. We still target the
big end-user customers
but in a more focused
way. I had fears at the
beginning about going
from a big consultancy
where you had a choice
of projects, you never
have to sit and do
nothing, you are always
learning. I thought that
would go away but in
fact both the number and
quality of projects is
higher.”
He advises anyone
considering such a move
to make sure they do
their due diligence.
“Not everyone needs to
move to a specialist
consultancy, and you
need to focus to find
the right one. You need
to find a company that
has the same aspirations
as you. No-one knows
what the future holds,
but for the foreseeable
future I can see myself
being in this small
specialist company and
it giving me what I need
to grow even further.
I’m really excited to
see how it is going to
pan out.” | |
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